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Ruth King

Jeffrey Epstein: Let The Conspiracy Theories Begin! Francis Menton

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=9887e5bea6

I’m old enough to have been around when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, on November 22, 1963. The suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was caught by Dallas police within about an hour after the shooting. They initially put him in a lock-up at Dallas police headquarters, where Oswald instantly became the highest-profile prisoner in the country. Just two days later, on November 24, the police undertook to transfer Oswald from the police headquarters to the county jail. They allowed a group of reporters into the basement of the police headquarters to observe as they escorted Oswald out to a waiting armored car to take him to the jail. Suddenly, with TV cameras rolling, a guy named Jack Ruby emerged from the group of reporters and shot Oswald dead at point blank range. By the end of the day, pretty much everybody in the country (myself included) had seen the clip of the shooting.

Who was this Ruby? He owned a couple of nightclubs in Dallas, but had a highly sketchy background that included alleged mob ties and involvement in drug dealing. No direct links between him and Oswald were ever revealed. His motive for killing Oswald? Excellent question.

You can easily understand why there has been an endless profusion of alternatives to the official “lone gunman” theory of the Kennedy assassination. If Oswald had been working with or backed by some powerful interests, they would clearly want him disposed of as soon as possible once he was arrested. Now Oswald had been silenced before ever saying a word. Ruby had no obvious personal motive for the shooting, and was just the kind of guy who might be carrying out a “hit.” And the Ruby hit doesn’t gibe very well with the “lone gunman” hypothesis of the Kennedy assassination. Thus we have had half a century of theories — officially going by the name “conspiracy theories” — as to who might have been working with Oswald to kill Kennedy, and why. Multiple official inquiries, most notably the Warren Commission, have tried to put these speculations to rest, but have never fully succeeded.

JED BABBIN ON BOYCOTT, DIVEST, AND SANCTIONS MOVEMENT AGAINST ISRAEL

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/12/bds-war-against-israel/

In July, when Rep. Ilhan Omar unveiled her plan to visit Israel, she also introduced a resolution that supported the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that has, as its first goal, to delegitimize Israel.

Later that month, the House voted 398-17 to oppose the BDS and other efforts to delegitimize Israel. Among the 17 votes opposing condemnation of BDS were three members of “the Squad,” Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. The latter two are the most anti-Israel and anti-Semitic members of Congress.

Since it was founded, the BDS movement hadn’t previously attracted much attention here. Created in 2005 by Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, BDS demands that every nation and business boycott Israel, divest all Israeli assets and impose economic sanctions on the Jewish state. Mr. Barghouti’s book, “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: The Struggle for Palestinian Rights,” argues falsely that Israel is a fascist, racist and apartheid state and a menace to international peace.

The BDS movement should have as its motto a quote from Mao Zedong — “A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth.” 

Mr. Barghouti, the principal spokesman for BDS, often states that the movement’s principal demand is for Israel to give back the land it seized during the 1967 War, including Jerusalem and the West Bank. BDS supporters in Hollywood, the media and academia have based their support on that point alone. 

Can Palestinians in Gaza Revolt Against Hamas? by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14713/palestinians-gaza-hamas-revolt

“Fifteen years ago, Hamas raised the slogan of ‘Islam is the solution’…. Now, there is rampant corruption [under Hamas]. The corruption is in all institutions, including the judiciary and the police. Today, the corruption is organized and managed by Hamas. The corruption is at the top of the pyramid. It is the corruption of politics, the corruption in the administration, the corruption in employment, the corruption in relief aid.” — Abu Safiyeh, a representative of the PLO’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the Gaza Strip, in a Facebook post that caused his arrest.

The voices emerging from the Gaza Strip are anguished and reflect the Palestinians’ growing sense of disillusionment with Hamas. These voices, however, are still small in numbers. Hamas’s brutal methods of suppression and torture have deterred a large number of Palestinians from speaking out. These voices will grow only if the international community heeds them and calls out Hamas for its brutal crackdown on Palestinians.

Hamas is carrying out its current crackdown against Palestinian activists because it knows full well that the world will probably not utter a word. Why would it? Bashing Israel is much more rewarding than identifying Palestinian leaders as the champion violators of human rights that they are.

Hamas leaders are scared. Of what? That Palestinians will return to the streets of the Gaza Strip to demand that their leaders govern rather than tyrannize. The living conditions of Palestinians in Gaza have gone from abysmal to worse.

That is why the leaders of Hamas recently ordered their security forces to detain several Palestinian activists for allegedly planning another wave of protests similar to those that swept the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

Last March, Hamas security forces used excessive force to break up demonstrations held in various parts of the Gaza Strip under the banner “We Want to Live!”

The demonstrations were organized by Palestinians to protest the longstanding economic crisis, including soaring unemployment and increased taxes imposed by Hamas on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Dozens of Palestinians were injured and arrested during the demonstrations, including human rights activists and journalists.

Russia Moves in on Sudan by Debalina Ghoshal

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14714/russia-sudan

Moscow has reportedly signed a “draft military agreement” with Sudan, “to facilitate entry of Russian and Sudanese warships to the ports of the two nations.” According to Maj. Gen. Al-Hadi Adam Musa, head of Sudan’s parliamentary subcommittee on Defense, Security and Public Order, “This deal will pave the way for more agreements and greater cooperation… possibly a Russian base on the Red Sea.”

Russia also “is looking at establishing a logistics base in Eritrea” and has reached a “draft agreement with Egypt for Russian warplanes to use Egyptian military bases.”

It is crucial for the West not only to keep a close watch on Moscow’s moves in Sudan, but to prevent Russia from increasing its influence in the region.

In January, three months before the April 11 military coup in Sudan that ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir after 30 years of iron-fisted rule, Moscow reportedly signed a “draft military agreement” with Sudan, “to facilitate entry of Russian and Sudanese warships to the ports of the two nations.” According to Maj. Gen. Al-Hadi Adam Musa, head of Sudan’s parliamentary subcommittee on Defense, Security and Public Order, “This deal will pave the way for more agreements and greater cooperation… possibly a Russian base on the Red Sea.”

This draft agreement followed other defense discussions between Russian President Vladimir Putin and al-Bashir. According to a recent report in The Arab Weekly:

“Al-Bashir has been talking with Russian President Vladimir Putin about a possible Russian military presence in Sudan since the pair met in November 2017. During their meeting, al-Bashir offered to construct an airbase for Russia on the Red Sea coast and to re-equip the Sudanese Army with Russian weapons, including SU-30 fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles…

More extraordinarily, during an interview with RIA Novosti, al-Bashir requested that Putin protect him from ‘US aggression,’ which intended to divide Sudan into five countries.”

Gore Says His Global Warming Predictions Have Come True? Can He Prove It? J. Frank Bullitt

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/12/gore

When asked Sunday about his 2006 prediction that we would reach the point of no return in 10 years if we didn’t cut human greenhouse gas emissions, climate alarmist in chief Al Gore implied that his forecast was exactly right.

“Some changes unfortunately have already been locked in place,” he told ABC’s Jonathan Karl.

“Sea level increases are going to continue no matter what we do now. But, we can prevent much larger sea level increases. Much more rapid increases in temperature. The heat wave was in Europe. Now it’s in Arctic. We’re seeing huge melting of the ice there. So, the warnings of the scientists 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, unfortunately were accurate.”

Despite all this gloom, he’s found “good news” in the Democratic presidential field, in which “virtually all of the candidates are agreed that this is either the top issue or one of the top two issues.”

So what has Gore been predicting for the planet? In his horror movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” he claimed:

Sea levels could rise as much as 20 feet. He didn’t provide a timeline, which was shrewd on his part. But even if he had said 20 inches, over 20 years, he’d still have been wrong. Sea level has been growing for about 10,000 years, and, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, continues to rise about one-eighth of an inch per year.

Storms are going to grow stronger. There’s no evidence they are stronger nor more frequent.

Mt. Kilimanjaro was losing its snow cap due to global warming. By April 2018, the mountain glaciers were taking their greatest snowfall in years. Two months later, Kilimanjaro was “covered by snow” for “an unusually long stint. But it’s possible that all the snow and ice will be gone soon. Kilimanjaro is a stratovolcano, with a dormant cone that could erupt.

Jeffrey Epstein Fallout Shows How Little Trust Americans Have in Media and Government

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/12/jeffrey-epstein-and-the-death-of-trust/

The reaction to the news Saturday morning that sex-trafficker-to-the-stars Jeffrey Epstein reportedly had committed suicide while in federal custody was nearly universal: No one was buying the “official” story.

Hashtags about the Clintons’ suspected culpability in Epstein’s death immediately dominated social media. People who had predicted Epstein would be dead before he faced trial felt vindicated. Suspicions about the “official line” on Epstein’s suicide were bipartisan. Trump foes on the Left, eager to pin the death on the president and his attorney general, proffered their own skepticism about what happened Saturday at a federal prison in Manhattan: “You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see an evil coverup to protect lots of powerful men here. You’d have to be bizarrely naive not to,” tweeted Harvard law professor and Trump hater Laurence Tribe.

Politicians from both sides of the political aisle, from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), demanded an investigation into what happened. The convoluted tale of how Epstein got away with his vile crimes took another final, dark twist.

Independent-minded pundits along with millions of American posed the same questions: Why was Epstein not on suicide watch? How did such a high-profile accused criminal who had attempted to kill himself a few weeks ago have access to any contraband that would facilitate his suicide wish? Did someone get to him in prison, or was someone bought off to turn the other way while Epstein tried to end his own life?

The White Supremacy Hoax A generation of domestic peace is increasingly difficult to imagine. Angelo Codevilla

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/12/the-white-

The specter of white supremacy haunts America. Let us empower the government to crush it.

Just yesterday, “the deplorables” were to be deplored because they were “racist, sexist, homophobic,” clingers to “God and guns,” and Russian dupes to boot. Today, the agility and unanimity with which our politicians and media—heck, the ruling class—have shifted to indicting roughly 72 percent of the population as white supremacists, likely violent, would fill with envy their homologues in China, Cuba, North Korea, and other tyrannical places. By comparison, Joseph Goebbels had sloppy message discipline. Not even the Soviets in their salad days were so “on message!”

One may suppose that our ruling class merely intends to energize its constituencies and cower the opposition in the 2020 elections. But this is no game. Their proposals would impose pre-punishment for pre-crimes on persons accused or “suspected” of being a “white supremacist.” By whom? On the basis of what?

In practice, a “white supremacist” is anyone whom anyone in power dislikes enough to so label him. Who would accept being outlawed at will? Our ruling class plays with matches in a house drenched in gasoline.

Here is the latest. The Wall Street Journal on Saturday featured an essay by one Clint Watts, formerly of the FBI and West Point’s Counter Terrorism Center. Watts makes those proposals using the word “white” 16 times in 18 paragraphs. The sociopolitical ideas rife among white people are the main matrix of terrorism in America, Watts contends. Racial profiling, anyone?

Salvatore Babones: The Global Triumph of American Civilisation

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/07/the-global-triumph

“The fact that American civilisation is growing in so many different directions at the same time makes it much more robust then past civilisations, even while ensuring that it will always offend someone. It has always offended European sensibilities, but Europe is the past. America is the future, and it will be for a long time to come.”

Like St Peter’s Basilica, the entire city of Rome is a palimpsest on which ancient structures undergird the modern streets. Take an espresso on the Piazza Navona, and you may notice that it is exactly the shape of a Roman stadium, which of course is what it was. Beyond Rome, the sites of London and Paris were selected and developed by Roman colonial administrators. The boundaries of Roman occupation continue to divide the island of Great Britain into the nations of England, Scotland and Wales.

Just as visible as the physical traces of ancient Rome are the human ones. Italy, Spain, Portugal and France still speak languages derived from Latin. All of the countries of continental Europe, as well as the super-national European Union, still use Roman legal systems. And notwithstanding the recent influx of Muslim immigrants, the dominant religion of Europe is still the religion of Constantine—to the extent that Europeans have any religion at all.

Yet for all this continuity, the civilisation of Western Europe is not the civilisation of Rome. Western civilisation was built upon the ruins of Rome. The population of Rome is thought to have shrunk by 90 per cent (or more) following the Germanic invasions that overthrew the Roman empire. The Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Vandals all sacked Rome. The Franks established what would become modern-day France. The Burgundians and Lombards left their names on regions of France and Italy, respectively. The Anglo-Saxons gave both their name and their language to Angle-land, or England.

Western civilisation thus emerged as a hybrid of the collapsed civilisation of Rome and the culture—one hesitates to call it a “civilisation”—of the Germanic invaders who conquered it. It is the civilisation that developed in those areas of the western Roman empire that fell under the rule of German aristocracies. North Africa, which ultimately came under Arab rule, was lost to the West in the seventh century. The rural north and east of what is today Germany had never been Romanised in the first place.

Visit the historical centre of Rome today, and Western civilisation is all around you: magnificent sixteenth-century churches, grand piazzas adorned with decorative fountains, the artwork of Bernini and Michelangelo. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of almost every other city in Europe. Americans tour Europe in droves to experience these living museums for themselves. Defying the destructive force of the Reformation, mass industrialisation and two world wars, the “sweetness and light” of Western civilisation still delights and shines. And the Pope still celebrates Mass at the “new” St Peter’s, now nearly 400 years old.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Taking Two Weeks Leave From Presidential Campaign To Report For Active Duty

https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/12/tulsi-gabbard-two-weeks-leave-campaign-report-active-duty/

Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said Monday she will be taking two weeks leave from her presidential campaign to report for active duty, as she serves with the Hawaii Army National Guard.

Gabbard will be leaving for two weeks to do a  joint training exercise mission in Indonesia, saying she is not worried about how it will affect her presidential campaign and that she is looking forward to serving her country, CBS News reported.

“I’m stepping off of the campaign trail for a couple of weeks and putting on my army uniform to go on a joint training exercise mission in Indonesia,” Gabbard said. In 2017, the Hawaii congresswoman also took two weeks off to report for duty.

“I love our country. I love being able to serve our country in so many ways including as a soldier,” Gabbard continued. “And so while some people are telling me, like gosh this is a terrible time to leave the campaign, can’t you find a way out of it? You know that’s not what this is about.”

Will the ABA Reject Due Process? Activists push a resolution that would redefine sexual consent and convict innocent men of assault. By KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-the-aba-reject-due-process-11565559212

In August 2014 the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga deemed student Corey Mock guilty of sexual assault, finding that in the disputed encounter he failed to prove he had obtained “affirmative consent” from the accuser. According to Mr. Mock’s unrebutted testimony, the female student’s actions during intercourse led him to believe that she had consented to sex. Mr. Mock sued the school, and a Tennessee judge ruled in his favor. “Affirmative consent,” the judge wrote, “is flawed and untenable if due process is to be afforded.” The standard “erroneously shifted the burden of proof” to the accused.

Mr. Mock’s experience is hardly unique. State laws in California, Connecticut and New York require educational institutions to find against students or personnel accused of sexual misconduct unless they can prove the accuser gave “affirmative consent,” meaning a positive manifestation by words or actions of consent to each sex act during an encounter. In practice, as Janet Halley of Harvard Law School has noted, these statutes authorize “proceedings in which the decision maker effectively presumes guilt and requires the accused to disprove it.”

In the past few years thinkers and politicians of diverse ideologies have recognized the excessively punitive nature of the American criminal justice system. Against this backdrop, it’s incredible that the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates plans this week to consider a resolution that would urge legislatures and courts to redefine criminal sexual assault and apply standards like the one in the Mock case.

The resolution, originally advanced by the ABA’s Criminal Justice Section and Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence, says that the law should “define consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact” and “provide that consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the circumstances.”